On the web there are a number of tools that help gather (RSS), distribute (email/send to a friend), share documents, and discuss in a public discussion forum, to exchange information with others. This is pervasive across the web. For example, as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, Yahoo News (an example of the user interface is shown in FIG. 1) provides 4 links (shown in FIG. 2) for each article page: ‘Email story’, ‘IM story’, ‘discuss’, and ‘printable view’. Yahoo sees the value and the desire for people to share, discuss and collaborate information together. These sites validate the fact that people want to remix and use the content in ways that are suitable to them.
Email Story—this feature allows a user to email the web page or article to one or multiple people and allows you to add a comment. However, there is no ‘forum’ to where the group can dynamically discuss together. Any ensuing discussion of the web page is carried out via e-mail or other conventional means such as telephone, instant messaging, etc.
IM Story—The instant messaging (IM Story) feature allows a user to discuss the story with one or more other users via instant messaging (IM). Although (IM) is more interactive and instantaneous as compared to e-mail, it is still very limited to allowing only currently online group members to participate, and there is no central location where the conversation is documented and you can add your comments (i.e. it has to be ‘Instant’ or you miss out)
Discuss—The discuss feature is a message board option that is widely used, but requires users to log into a public message board forum in which any user can read and post messages related (or unrelated) to the subject of the web page. A main disadvantage of this known feature is that the discussion forum is public, with all users able to read and post messages. Also, other than permitting the posting and reading of messages group by topic, these discussion or message boards do not include any features for controlling the timing or method of delivering content to users. Furthermore, while a user can use known message boards to pose a question to others, the questions must be answered textually, i.e., by the answering user typing in a response. These known message boards do not include any “structured response” feature for allowing users to respond to questions by merely selecting one of a plurality of different possible responses using a mouse, keyboard or other input device.